I generally understand that the average base-liner regards the Eve-gate as a myth if they've even heard about it. That even mention that humans once traveled from a place called Earth to the New Eden star cluster was a myth and fantasy.

At the same time, there are the Eve trailers of past/present - which share a story directed at players, telling them of how humanity originated far away upon the planet named Earth. That humans via the Eve Gate came to New Eden & settled here, and traversed the eve-gate back/forth until one dark moment when the gate collapsed, giving way to a gradual dark age. Where science and civilization fell to nothingness before drawing itself up and back into space. This i understand, took a vast quantity of time to transpire.

Well, if I understand both sides of the Eve story correctly from an IC / OOC setup point of view, - how have the peoples of New Eden grappled with the fossil records of their respective planets? That they are all genetically compatible. That no, it would seem that they did not originate on their home planets. And further, that no, they were not alone in the universe.

Unfortunately none of the information in the Evelopedia discusses the geological records of the planets and in particular the fossil records of various forms of life that have evolved / inhabited the planets of New Eden. While the various perspectives presented casually touch on and refer to genetics, the gravity of a lack of fossil record (or presence of), would have probably profoundly impacted world views on matters of origin / place in the universe of pre-to-early space-flight, all be it scientifically literate peoples in New Eden.

Yet the link doesn't really touch on it. For the most part, there are references to 'archeology', various shared theories, languages, creation myths and so on. But little that would otherwise be acutely binary.

If fossil record then it's likely your home. If no fossil record it's obviously -not- your home or place you evolved on. Further, this is the sort of basic thing you'd as a people/planet realize scientifically -before- you became a serious space traveling people.

It'd be obvious long before you ever left your planet, and started to see similarities with other peoples from other planets.

Which draws out the question...how has the information relating to human evolution available or not, within the fossil records of New Eden's planets impacted world views of those humans who live in New Eden?

There is one potential answer, which is that the original Terran terraforming process is so massively disruptive in its effort to reformat worlds for human life that it effectively erased easy access to long-term fossil records.

That's a weak answer at best, though, as it leaves several open questions:

Wouldn't such massive upheaval leave distinct records of their own? Wouldn't it be noticeable from exploration of other uninhabited planets that only a handful in New Eden have gone through massive alteration in roughly the same timeframe, while other planets did not?

What about the technologies encountered in-space by multiple civilizations (stargates, acceleration gates, etc)? Are they just chalked up to 'lol jove' and left at that?

Wouldn't there be a massive genetic disparity, in that any native New Eden life would have a common genetic makeup while any imported life would only be common with itself? Wouldn't it be noticeable that genetically human-related life only appears on worlds that have gone through terraforming?

Ultimately there are a lot of questions here, but as the PF stands we can't look too hard or it falls apart.

Lyn Farel

The Syncretist and Earthologist theories hold perfectly fine with that in mind: no fossils means coming from somewhere else, so it fits perfectly to those theories and looks like an obvious conclusion to draw upon that.

The Mold theory has always been shaky and clunky, since it doesn't explain stargates or anything... And neither does it explains the probable lack of fossils (especially, human related DNA fossils, not alien ones).

However, in the case of a fossil record it's not a matter of conjecture, theory, or claim. One ought to exist or not exist. Either option can't help but draw out certain world views or understandings amongst the scientifically minded of the various known peoples of New Eden. This particularly before a people meet anyone else from another solar system. Before they get off of their respective planets. The syncrest / earthologist theories seem to presume the matter was never discussed prior to the populations of planets meeting one another in space. (Or I'm reading them incorrectly.)

Which leads to how did the peoples of New Eden deal with the origin question, at a binary, scientific, rational and logical level? Are the Amarr writings quoted above, CCP cannon or becauseofrpz? To be honest, no, I'm not exceptionally well versed in Amarr CCP-cannon lore. Yet, even if the Amarr have it sorted out with great dollops of faith and religious teachings smoothing over the issue, what about the other non-amarr peoples? For instance the Gallente/Caldari population prior to their interstellar space flight.

The irony is that, as far as I can tell, the Amarr are the closest to the truth. Colonists came to New Eden to escape the conflicts that were occurring over the easily exploited resources in the Milky Way. Of course that speaks volumes about the population levels that had managed to strain the available resource of an entire galaxy.

However given how charming the empire is nobody else would care to acknowledge that they are actually right in any way shape or form. Life can be funny that way.

The Amarr didn't do it to match planetary records: Their records just stretch back so far that there are still bits included about the early settlement of New Eden: Actually, there is at least one chronicle that all four nations of EVE have such records to some degree:

The Traditionalists said the only way to go was to base the new calendar as much as possible on the 24-hour, 365-day calendar favored by early post-collapse settlers. All the races, especially the Jovians and the Amarrians, had some data on the old calendar and by combining the data it could be remade more or less in its original form.

So, when that chronicle was written, New Eden did apparently be very aware that there had been a settlement of New Eden and a very good idea of the calendar the settlers had. Also it is implicated here that it was known that the settlement was happening through the EVE gate and that it collapsed at some point...

And then someone at CCP decided that EVE gate, terra, etc. should be rather a myth or theory. So, the entire cluster changed. <,<

The Amarr didn't do it to match planetary records: Their records just stretch back so far that there are still bits included about the early settlement of New Eden: Actually, there is at least one chronicle that all four nations of EVE have such records to some degree:

The Traditionalists said the only way to go was to base the new calendar as much as possible on the 24-hour, 365-day calendar favored by early post-collapse settlers. All the races, especially the Jovians and the Amarrians, had some data on the old calendar and by combining the data it could be remade more or less in its original form.

So, when that chronicle was written, New Eden did apparently be very aware that there had been a settlement of New Eden and a very good idea of the calendar the settlers had. Also it is implicated here that it was known that the settlement was happening through the EVE gate and that it collapsed at some point...

And then someone at CCP decided that EVE gate, terra, etc. should be rather a myth or theory. So, the entire cluster changed. <,<

Why? Someone in Iceland or Atlanta thought it would add more psssshhhhh to Eve to mess around with the setting in such an odd way?

This was probably the same time a lot of other explicit references to pre-collapse civilizations - Amarr being related to the Catholic Church, Gallente being French settlers, etc. - were written out of the lore.

This was probably the same time a lot of other explicit references to pre-collapse civilizations - Amarr being related to the Catholic Church, Gallente being French settlers, etc. - were written out of the lore.

Hmm. Well. While I can appreciate the desire to sidestep certain loaded RL variables, while developing a science fiction, space based game world, doing so and in the process creating a difficult fracture in setting seems a little problematic.